Sam Darnold is a Super Bowl champion now, and he says the San Francisco 49ers deserve a share of the credit.
The Seattle Seahawks quarterback, who spent the 2023 season as a backup in Santa Clara, opened up on an episode of Bussin’ with the Boys about how that one year under Kyle Shanahan’s staff reshaped his entire approach to the game — and ultimately revived a career that had gone sideways in New York and Carolina.
It wasn’t a glamorous stint in San Francisco. Darnold signed a one-year, $4.5 million deal with $3.5 million guaranteed after going 13-25 as a starter with the Jets — who selected him third overall in 2018 — and 8-9 over two seasons with the Panthers. His lone start in San Francisco came in a meaningless Week 18 game against the Rams, a 21-20 loss in which he completed 61.5 percent of his passes for 189 yards and a touchdown. He appeared in four other games in mop-up duty, finishing with 297 passing yards, two touchdowns and one interception on the year.
But, for Darnold, the experience on the team in that organization is what reshaped the way he looked at the game.
Darnold said he arrived in San Francisco with a clear-eyed acceptance of his role — and a deliberate plan to make the most of it. He had watched what Shanahan’s system did for quarterbacks and decided that absorbing it from the inside, even from the bench, was worth more than chasing a starting job elsewhere.
“I think going to San Francisco — I mean, shoot, you guys saw what Mac Jones did this year,” Darnold said, nodding to Jones’ recent success in the system. “I understood that quarterbacks in that system, quarterbacks with Kyle — you look at Brock and all the success he’s had there — quarterbacks just thrive in that system.”
The Jones callout is intriguing, considering the current 49ers backup quarterback has said something similar about his time in San Francisco and why he’s happy to get another year in the system.
Darnold also pointed to the daily habits of George Kittle, Fred Warner, Christian McCaffrey and Trent Williams as a kind of blueprint for professional excellence before he singled out quarterback Brock Purdy’s preparation as something that genuinely changed how he approached the job.
“You just have all these studs who are over there. And to just learn their habits and stuff that they do in the offseason, how they get better, it was just such a great opportunity for me to just go there and be a sponge, and just learn so much football. Learn how to take care of my body off the field,” Darnold said. “I can’t mention Brock enough. But just the way that he prepared really showed me how to really prepare, because you don’t know what you don’t know. And I think for me, being able to go there and see how efficient he was — because you can put a ton of time in, but you can be doing it the wrong way. And he was so efficient with his time. And he would cut out three or four hours of studying throughout the night because our game plans were crazy. …The system is so intricate.
The self-reflection that came with accepting a backup role mattered just as much. Darnold described a moment of honesty with himself before signing with San Francisco. He recognized that chasing a starting job for its own sake wasn’t the answer.
“But, just getting to know that system and getting to know those coaches, like that’s really why I decided to be a backup in San Francisco,” he said. “I thought that would be the best place to just go. And people say it all the time, and I’ve heard it, but I feel like I got my PhD in football when I went to San Francisco.”
The results since leaving the 49ers have been seen Darnold go from a first-round bust to bonafide start. He’s won 14 games in each of his two seasons with Minnesota and Seattle and, in 2025, he threw for 4,048 yards with 25 touchdowns and a 67.7 completion percentage in the regular season, then went 61.5 percent, 672 yards, five touchdowns and zero interceptions in the postseason — good enough to earn his first Super Bowl ring.
“It was so fun to go learn football there,” Darnold said. “And I’m so thankful for that opportunity that I got in San Francisco.”
This article originally appeared on Niners Wire: Sam Darnold credits 49ers for football ‘PhD’ that saved his career
Reporting by Oliver G., Niners Wire / Niners Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Oliver G., Niners Wire | USA TODAY Network
